This project will investigate advanced freeway merge assistance strategies that can potentially be enabled by harnessing the potential of connected vehicle communication technologies. Strategies will be developed and assessed using simulation models of traffic and communication systems that provide measures of mobility and safety impacts.

Goals:

The strategies to be developed and evaluated will include:

(1) Dynamic Lane Control: Connected Vehicle technology will be used to identify available capacity in lanes to the left of the mainline merge lane and then encourage vehicles in the merge lane to shift, creating additional merge capacity. The ability of Connected Vehicles to provide rich monitoring data and to pinpoint vehicle advisories and lane specific speed/pricing will be used.

(2) Gaps, Responsive Metering: Using high-resolution individual vehicle trajectory data from connected vehicles, the system will be able to institute aggressive dynamic metering rates to take advantage of gaps for merging traffic.

(3) Merge Control: Finally, as vehicles attempt to merge into traffic, vehicle-to-vehicle communications will be utilized to provide cooperative merging. In essence, this will provide a high-tech, late merge approach that has proven successful in work zones. The capabilities of connected vehicles will allow for merging in smaller gaps, increasing capacity. The automation provided by connected vehicles will be used to mitigate potential driver error to significantly reduce crashes.

Product Type:

DataResearch report

Test Methodology:

Traffic simulations of vehicles and of communication systems were used to evaluate potential freeway merge strategies.

Other Information:

Federal Highway Administration provided $500,000 of the $650,000 funding for this project.